


Everything is blue

by Kendrene



Category: Wynonna Earp (TV)
Genre: Alpha Nicole Haught, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Angst with a Happy Ending, EFA Fic Live 4, F/F, Miscarriage, Omega Waverly Earp
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-22
Updated: 2020-05-22
Packaged: 2021-03-03 01:41:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,836
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24326680
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kendrene/pseuds/Kendrene
Summary: Waverly and Nicole deal with Waverly's miscarriage
Relationships: Waverly Earp/Nicole Haught
Comments: 14
Kudos: 351





	Everything is blue

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry my return to the WE fandom (and submission to the EFA Fic Live) is angsty - I promise the fic has a happy ending, but it's also sad. Loss has no other way to be. 
> 
> \- Dren

Blue used to be Waverly’s favorite color but it isn’t anymore. 

She hadn’t cared that — in Doc Holiday’s own words — pink was the popular choice for boys back in the old days. When Jeremy had told her with a laugh that she was falling prey to society’s gender standards, Waverly had listened politely, but she hadn’t given a damn either. They wouldn’t understand she wanted to give the baby the room she’d dreamt of all her childhood and never had. Reminiscing about the past, the countless hours she’d spent in her cramped bed, watching the paint peel off of the ceiling and wishing it was unblemished, like the endless sky outside her window, wouldn’t do any good. She had her heart set on blue and it was enough. 

It certainly had been enough for Nicole. 

And so the bedroom at the back of the house — which had belonged to Wylla — had been decked out in white and blue. Like the ocean Ward always promised he would take her to when he was sober and kind and a good, loving father. The sea she’d finally gotten to see thanks to Nicole. 

A week after she has been discharged from the hospital, Waverly can’t stand to see the color anymore. 

It seeps into her through her pores. It fills her lungs to drowning, brackish and cold. So very cruel. 

Two weeks go by, and on the fifteenth day she walks herself down to Purgatory, nice and early, while Nicole is busy at the station and Wynonna’s passed out on the couch. 

She raids the hardware store, and it’s just that much harder to sneak back inside the Homestead laden with cans of paint and brushes and all else that she could think of that’ll help get rid of the blue. 

But the house is an old friend, and a lifetime of abuse makes for a quick learner. The third step has a nasty creak, and the floorboards in front of Wynonna’s room are a bit loose, warped by age and weather changes. 

Quieter than church mice, Waverly sneaks to the blue room, fixated on carrying out her crime in broad daylight. She sets on the walls first, not bothering to scrape the blue paint off — but painting right on top of it. The brushes come in quick, furious strokes and the only sound is that of her ragged breathing. The slow _drip-drip_ of the paint. 

The white she’s picked for the endeavor is the searing shade that always glares from the glossy pages of decor magazine. Perfect and falsely cheerful. 

Surprisingly enough, she gets through the ordeal without breaking down in tears.

They ambush her, when she’s turning her attention to the furniture. It’s almost lunchtime and she’s tired, but she doesn’t care for food.

Lately, everything tastes like ashes. 

Waverly couldn’t say what triggers the first, heart wrenching sobs. Perhaps it’s the realization that she’s running out of paint, but more likely, it is the sight of the blue crib Nicole and Wynonna built from scratch. 

Waverly had managed to avoid looking at it until now, but when her gaze alights on it — on how empty it is despite the pile of stuffed animals waiting for the boy didn’t come home from the hospital with her — reality sinks in. 

She cries and screams, and falls on the offending piece of furniture in a rage. She doesn’t know whether she’s screaming against gods or fate, and doesn’t care. 

Her hands tug at the wood, batter at it and when it fails to give in to her demands to tear and render it to kindling, Waverly casts about for something she can beat it into submission with. 

That’s how Nicole finds her, sat on the floor with open knuckles and bruised hands, exhausted after she has cried what she thinks are the last of her tears. 

Even when Nicole’s arms snake under hers to lift her, Waverly is numbed. Chewed up and and sucked dry by a grief that spat her out once it was done with her. 

The wood of the crib is red in places, shining with spatters of her blood. 

“It’s my fault!” Nicole lets her scream the words into her chest. She puts aside the sadness she too must be feeling, and makes herself the place she knows Waverly to need. She hates herself for this too. She loathes grief for the way it has of turning people selfish. For how it rots, unheard and unseen, until the gangrene has spread and it’s too late. 

Her heart is sick with it. 

It takes some time for her to quieten down, and when she does Nicole pulls back. She stands, and leaves without a word. There’s been a brief moment, before her mate let her go, when Waverly thinks she feels a ghost-like touch on the top of her skull. As though Nicole had been about to draw her in more firmly. 

Incapable of moving, she waits for her to come back. Hoping that she will, and dreading it as well.

It would be so much easier to stop existing, and she may already have begun. 

She’s barely eating, sleeping in scraps. Even now, consumed by the fear Nicole has had enough, she’s drifting in and out of a life that hurts too much to belong to her. It’s as if thinking _is_ a hurt in and on itself, and Waverly makes herself be completely still. If she’s quiet and small enough, it’s possible that the thoughts will flow by without touching her. 

When Nicole comes back, smelling of leather and warm sunlight, Waverly lets go of a breath she had no idea that she was holding. 

“You ruined nothing.” She’s focused on tending to Waverly’s hands as she speaks, holding them in hers when the iodine tincture stings too much, and running soothing circles with her thumb on the undamaged parts. “It wasn’t your fault, Waves.” 

“You heard what the doctor said.” Waverly counters, bitter. “He can’t exclude that I— that it’d—” 

“That it could happen again if we try for another child.” 

She’d thought her heart had well and truly broken when she’d heard the words back in the hospital, but coming from Nicole they’re even worse. 

“You should find yourself another mate. Someone that can, you know, actually _stay_ pregnant.”

It’s clear Nicole has no intention to letting her hands go, so Waverly tears herself away. Her knuckles throb, but she swallows the pain down. Savors it. It’s what she deserves.

“I love you, Waverly Earp. And I chose you. I still do.” 

It’d be so much _better_ if Nicole got mad. If she called her a failure, or blamed her. Waverly can’t deal with gentle now. Not when she’s so riddled with guilt. Not when anger simmers just below the surface of her soul. A fire poorly banked.

Nicole has to see it written on her face, in the deep furrows she feels her fury’s digging on her brow. In the hard line of her mouth, and in the way her upper lip curls back to show a flash of teeth.

She leaves again, and returns bringing a hammer. With a nod toward the crib she hands it off, and Waverly notes she has one for her too.

“It’s easier if you use proper tools.” 

“You’re not mad? You built it, after all.” Waverly hefts the hammer, brings it around in a practice swing.

“I can build another,” Nicole rolls her shoulders and pushes a sad smile. “And if we won’t need it, that’s fine too.” 

They go at it in turns and later, after Wynonna has discovered the pile of debris, she has enough sense not to ask.

***********************

It takes another few months before they can go to the shore. It’s a lake, not the sea, but it will do, Waverly thinks as she watches the tranquil waters turn indigo with dusk. 

It’s the height of summer, and sunset is a drawn out affair, days stretching forever and unwilling to end. The sky is blue most days, the same shade she used to dream of in her room when she was little. Waverly isn’t particularly fond of the color still, but at least now she can suffer to look at it sometimes. It gets a little easier if Nicole is close by, but then again everything is easier with Nicole around. 

When the day finally ends they burn what’s left of the baby’s crib. It had been Waverly’s idea — the splintered wood had been taking up space in the barn, and gathering dust. 

This isn’t a catharsis, a pyre on which the grief she still carries in her heart will somehow transcend its nature. There simply are things Waverly can’t bear to have around — the pile of broken wood being one. It doesn’t matter that the shape of it is not remotely recognizable; Waverly knows what it had been and that’s enough. 

It’s the promise of the “almost” and “still could” that she is burning, the second guessing and what ifs that keep her awake at night. 

She’s not ready to let go of the loss, but more importantly she’s not equipped to face the possibility that somehow, in their future, there may be another child. Perhaps this is the worst part of it all — no matter how used to grief Waverly had thought she already was, she isn’t primed to face something of which she doesn’t see an ending.

Eyes trained on the yellow-orange dance of flames, she doesn’t see Nicole approach until the alpha’s arms are circling her waist. 

“I don’t know how you could put up with me.” Waverly admits, hands dropping down to cover Nicole’s. “I know I’ve been awful.”

“Sometimes.” A fleeting smile curves against her cheek. “But I love you anyway. Besides ‘in sickness and in health’ remember?” 

“Nicole…” Waverly turns.

“I love you,” Nicole reinstates, knowing she’s about to apologize again and refusing to allow her to. They’ve talked like this before. Many times, since that day in the blue room, which isn’t blue anymore outside her memory. “No matter what. Remember that, Waverly Earp.” 

*********************** 

Blue is Waverly’s favorite color.

Blue is her favorite color, but the room in which she’s sitting has white walls. 

The rocking chair is only a shade darker, and the tiny human suckling at her breast is dressed in a penguin-patterned onesie, courtesy of Wynonna. 

Emma will pick what color her room should be when she’s older, if she wants to.

Waverly’s eyes drift to the window, to the gnarled apple tree in the backyard. Its shade shelters a simple white cross, the name _Liam_ carved on the stone. 

No dates, but it’s been five years. 

“Did you know you have a brother, little one?”

Emma coos, eyes that were black at her birth now cornflower blue. She grabs one of Waverly’s fingers in her tiny hand, and stares at it in utter concentration. 

“He’s not around anymore, but I’m sure he would have loved you, very, very much…” 

**Author's Note:**

> [follow the link on Tumblr](https://kendrene.tumblr.com/) for more gay nonsense!


End file.
